JackOshawa

On Dec 31 2010, my computer (Dell 9200 series) was working fine. Later in the evening, after midnight, Vista would no longer boot when I powered up. The system went through the initial Dell logo screen and then to a screen that had "Vista Home Premium" displayed on the bottom and above it was an error message: "The system cannot find the file specified." with an "OK" box below it. Clicking on the OK box cleared the screen and then the exact same message came up again. Same response if I hit the Esc key. There was no response if I tried anything else. All I could do was to hold the Power button to turn off the computer. I made no changes to anything - software, hardware - no changes whatsoever from my previous use of the computer. I have an external hard drive connected by a USB cable and I disconnected it but the same problem occurred. I tried the Startup Repair option in System Recovery Options, but it reported that there was no problem. In SetUp, I looked at the boot sequence and it showed a floppy drive as number 1, my onboard hard drive as number 2, and my DVD drive as number3. I don't have a floppy drive, so it showed "(not present)" beside that, which is OK. It showed the number 3 option (DVD drive) as OK. However, it showed "(not present)" beside my onboard hard drive, the number 2 boot option. That's very peculiar because, in the Command Prompt option of System Recovery, I was able to access the hard drive and actually look at the folders and files with no problem. I have no clue as to what I should do next and I would appreciate any help.